Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Always meant to "do" L. Cohen, but never really have, despite swooning to his songs on McCabe and Mrs Miller

Ah, Larry... He'll be returning in due course with one of his later bands.

Shout going out to Andrew Mueller.

"Apparently about Boy George" says Michael

Always forget how great Pere Ubu are - what a fantastic piece of music

Douglas Keeley bringing some unusual nominations

About which Doug comments: "In that clip I can't help but think that he looks a little bit
like Josh Homme? Back in the mid 90's Jarvis Cocker was presented with an
award (perhaps the Mercury Music prize?) and his entire acceptance speech
consisted of the lyrics of this song (make of that what you will!!!!)"

Doug: "I went for this version which is like something from
"Godspell" (remember that film from 1973?) rather than the Kiss
version. A stadium singalong with some nice "noodley" prog
elements....but oh so cheesy!""Made after his LSD enlightenment/breakdown in the mid 1960's. He doesn't write
about music in general terms like the other two - just his own music ('Brand
New Cadillac' etc) and I find the backing track genuinely unsettling and
creepy."

Wow that is weird....

Ed Torpey pops by again, proffering this good 'un

James Parker points to an essay he and a Tiny Mix Tapes colleague wrote about self-reflexivity in pop and nonpop, which they argue represents a conceptual turn. James says "this meta-thing has obviously always been around [but] it's gone into overdrive in recent years. Almost to the point that, as a conceptual strategy, it has come to define the contemporary moment. In other words, the argument chimes quite strongly with some of what you say in Retromania, but with a more optimistic a spin."

Fascinating read - and as James says there are lot more contemporary examples of self-reflexive music posted to illustrate that essay than have appeared in this collective blog series, so far

That said, I'm not sure self-reflexivity per se is the main thing I'm pursuing here with my own posts - more like songs that proffer some sort of wisdom - or at least thoughts - concerning the nature of music and the role it plays in anyone's life... the power and the mystery. Vernacular philosophizin’ about music - giving praise to music - love songs to songs.

But certainly pop's persistent compulsion to refer to itself is most interesting. It runs all the way through the music - things like ‘Rock and Roll
Will Stand’ were recorded when rock’n’roll was barely out of diapers.

Then you get your sort of genre-patriotism songs, your national anthems for the jungle nation, the garage nation, the heavy metal people, and so forth. Hip hop, with things like Naughty By Nature's "Hip Hop Hooray". Reggae - innumerable examples. This literally seems to come with the territory, in so far as they are the byproduct of territorialisation, in the Deleuze/Guattari sense. As soon as there’s an us versus not-us dynamic, you get the reflexive anthems.

I don't get the sense it's quite the same with pre-rock'n'roll genres of popular music, although obviously you have your "There's No Business Like Show Business" type songs, your "It Don't Mean A Thing If It Ain't Got That Swing" numbers...

CJ comes again with a few more goodies

I think there must be more from Pavement that fit this category - what with them being a bunch of former record store clerks.

Love that song - might be my favorite thing by him, still.

In some ways, quite a silly band, The Clash.

Kevin Quinn back again with some more

At the Boogaloo launch in London for Rip It up ten years ago (goodness me, is it really ten years?) I started by saying that postpunk was like a gigantic answer record to "It's Only Rock and Roll", saying "no it isn't... this music can contain Dada and disco and Futurism and free jazz and Suprematism and noise and changing the world and dub and Situationism and musique concrete and a thousand other things". However later I wondered if perhaps I hadn't misunderstood what "It's Only Rock and Roll" was about... What is it about, anyone?

Ah, postpunk's great foe! The butt of its abuse, I mean. I'm sure Chuck Berry didn't give a toss about Wire and Cabaret Voltaire's calls for the de-Berryfication of rock.

One of the greatest things to watch is Chuck Berry bossing Keith Richards around in the rehearsals for some kind of rock superstars gathering round to celebrate the godfather of r'n'r type anniversary concert... making him replay the riff until he gets the twangy little whammy bar flourish exactly to his liking... Keef visibly fuming but keeping his trap shut.

Kev fingers this as "one of the many
sites of plunder for Ronson's Uptown Funk"

I am of the opinion that 1999 is a really poor album.

Keith McDougall offers

Completely forgot about the existence of this one. Back in the day it spurred some fun posts about the concept of "Alt-Rock Slow Jamz"

Saturday, June 27, 2015

"sketches, fragments, half-finished instrumentals: 2005 - 2015" - glorious stuff from Xylitol, drifting between radiophonia, sinogrime, that recent (also glorious) Aphex-dump, Req, and the peripheries of this parish (Mordant in library mode, early Woebot, etc)I don't know if Xylitol recognises the H-word but he did put out a tune called "Ghost Office", which made me titter^^^^^^^^^^^^^^Behold, a new release from A Year In The CountryIn Every Mind by A Year In The CountryIn Every Mind - Transmission Resonances: Volume 1."In Every Mind is released as part of the A Year In The Country project, which began as a year long journey through and searching for an expression of an underlying unsettledness to the English bucolic countryside dream; an exploration of an otherly pastoralism, the patterns beneath the plough, pylons and amongst the edgelands… a wandering through the further flung reaches of work with its roots in folkloric concerns and what has been labelled hauntological culture... and which has now begun to wander pathways anew..."A fractured otherly pastoral audiologica dream via the reverberations and signals of transmissions gone by...

In contrast to the telling of tales from the wald/wild wood in times gone by, today the stories that have become our cultural folklore we discover, treasure, pass down, are often those that are transmitted into the world via the airwaves, the (once) cathode ray machine in the corner of the room, the zeros and ones that flitter around the world and the flickers of (once) celluloid tales.

They take root in our minds and imagination via the darkened rooms of modern-day reverie, partaken of in communal or solitary seance.

The Transmission Resonances volumes of audiological constructs will take as their wellspring such stories; focusing on those tales that continue to resonate over time, which have gained layers of meaning as the years have passed, that express and/or explore some sense of otherly pastoralism and which skirt the edgelands.

From that first fount, the plan is for these volumes to wander through their own particular journey, pushing aside the brambles and travelling the pathways that they will; to consider the stories of the patterns beneath the plough and the pylons across the land.

In Every Mind: Transmission Resonances: Volume 1 has as its wellhead the continuing reverberations of the 1969 cathode ray version of Alan Garner’s The Owl Service.

It pushes open the attic door from whence the scratching descends and travels to places that surprised, and intrigued our good selves when it was being shaped on our own particular audiological potters wheels; creating its own particular form of fractured albionic audiologica.

This is the first release constructed solely by A Year In The Country.

The album is available in two different hand-crafted editions - Night and Dawn versions - printed using archival Giclée pigment inks; presenting and encasing their journey in amongst tinderboxes, string bound booklets and accompanying ephemera."

Jon Brooks recently put out a superb record on More Than Human - Walberswick - in more ambient-eerie mode than library-wistful - all done on the Buchla 200 series Electric Music Box apparently - the vinyl sold out now but I heard there was going to be a repress - there was also supposed to be a digital download version becoming available in June but it has yet to materialise

Friday, June 26, 2015

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Not really about musical rhythm per se - but rhythm as a mystic-materialist principle pervading everything at every scale. Riddim runnin' tings - all tings.

In that sense, not music-about-music but music-about-reality-(and-reality-as-fundamentally-musical)

Got into all of that in Rip It Up, but I didn't go on nearly as much as I should about what an amazing piece of music "In The Beginning There Was Rhythm" is - what the guitar and the bass in particular are doing. And Ari's vocal (inspired by hearing the early rap records). The total effect is disjointed but On the One.

Again, not just music under discussion here. Like "In the Beginning", a cosmological statement, but less of a celebration - fatalistic. (A sister-song perhaps to Siouxsie's "Circle", about cycles natural and abusive - "the circle has an empty sound").

The full album of Slave To The Rhythm - whizz ahead to 20.36 for some mad mouth-music - Grace concrete.

The Ian McShane "annihilating rhythm" bit crops up sampled in many a house record over the years, but check out this sample of GJ from that mad-concrete track on Slave

The same era of junglizm produced this rhythm song...

And also this one - "rhythm" isn't in the title but it is in the sample lick

Many many more rhythm candidates I'm sure - but I'm gonna wind it up with this one....

Now that one, that's not about music at all.

.... Ian Dury does have a bunch of music-music candidates, though - I'll be coming back to them later...

Monday, June 22, 2015

Anwen Crawford drops by again to inform in re. what the Manics were on about in "Motown Junk"

"MSP always claimed they were railing against Wet Wet
Wet/George Michael style blue-eyed soul/80s AOR in 'Motown Junk'… not Motown
per se. Much the same stuff that Morrissey was complaining about on
'Panic', in other words…"

She also nominates The Smiths "Rubber Ring" which I also had on my list - a song about the song as lifesaver - the singer as surrogate friend, companion, rescuer - playfully (but also deadly seriously) beseeching his own fans not to forget the singer or his songs

Michaelangelo Matos drops science about The Four Tops's "It's The Same Old Song" and whether it's an answer-back to the critics:

"It's not a riposte, it's an admission--nearly a boast! It's
the follow-up to "I Can't Help Myself," and a note-for-note ripoff,
which the lyrics acknowledge upfront. The reason? When "I Can't Help
Myself" hit big, Columbia Records announced it was going to reissue its only
Four Tops single ("Ain't That Love") from 1960 to cash in, so
Holland-Dozier-Holland were instructed, Get a followup out now. Engineer
Bob Dennis, in the liner notes of The Complete Motown Singles Vol. 5: 1965:
"With the Top standing by, they wrote [the words to] 'It's the Same Old
Song' on the spot." They rush-released the single to undercut
Columbia--and then cut ties with the latter's pressing plant, which they'd been
using since 1960."

Matos also nominates The O'Jays "I Love Music"

Keith McDougall brings a lot

Love it

Like it

Not one of their best

Never been able to get into the first Clash LP

(For me The Clash get going - words and music wise - with "Complete Control" and "White Man In Hammersmith Palais" (also both songs about music / music biz, as earlier discussed). Then go right off the boil with Give Em Enough Rope. Then heat up a little (to lukewarm) with London Calling. Then heat up slightly more (tepid plus) with Sandinista. Then hot up a fair bit more with Combat Rock ("Rock The Casbah" is also about music, as is "Overpowered By Funk" I assume). Hmmm, seems like I don't rate the Clash much at all.)

Back to Keith's list - he has five for The Fall ("

Music
Scene, It's the New Thing, Session Musician, I Am Damo Suzuki, probably heaps more") but let's go with this one -

LOVE IT

Love it, although more conceptually-historically than grime-as-grime, tune-as-tune - although it's good.

LUVVIT TO THE BONE, THE MARROW. Well, of course, I do, I posted the YouTube clip, didn't it? This is the vastly superior mix to the ones posted by others, which is why I had to put it up there.

LOVE IT. Fantastic lyrics.

LOVE IT.

That sample is from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, isn't it?

LOVE IT.

And a happy birthday to Green, three days after my own, oddly enough. Would you believe he has just turned sixty? We were listening to "Petrococadollar" in the car on a trip over the weekend, and it occurred to me that next year it will be ten years since White Bread Black Beer. You are keeping us waiting, Mr Gartside.

Cardrossmaniac 2with The Sports "Who Listens To The Radio", Joan Jett "I Love Rock'n'Roll" and a tribute to Opal (sorry about the dog and the credit cards, man).

And Aaron from Airport At The Trees with some more suggestions, including a "Music Is The Key" that reminded me of another "Music Is The Key" by one of my favorite groups ever. Unfortunately it's my least favorite track by them - and only marginally more tolerable as an Omni Trio remix.

Friday, June 19, 2015

The torrent continues..Anwen Crawford suggests one of Manic Street Preachers's many songs about music (which also include, she says a whole "subset of songs
about themselves as a band -- this started early with songs like 'You Love Us'," but "post-Richey Edwards there's a whole slew of mournful lyrics about how much they
miss him, the follies of youth") As with so many Manics songs, I have no idea what they are on about - why are they railing against Motown? Are they railing against Motown? (I really think they are quite frightful as lyricists, which makes it all the more puzzling why so many literati-type music fans are obsessed with them).Neil Kulkarni says his favorite meta-music song is by Creedence Clearwater Revival -Andrew Briggs drops a load Strikes me as one of Ray Davies's more petty swipes, that one - perhaps there's some justifying back story, a run-in with some jaded faded pro who mocked their lack o' chops, but yeah...Probably my least fave song on my favorite album by them, one of my favorite albums ever... remember being taken somewhere on first hearing Younger in 1983 (Micalef's copy)... could not believe something like "Everybody's Been Burned" could exist, could be so wise... still think "Mind Gardens" is incredible, the one everybody seems to regard as a period-piece embarrassment... my recent favorite on it is this one which has nothing to do with meta music, but let's have itBut yeah "So You Wanna Be A Rock 'n' Roll Star" - bit smug, isn't it? Bit superior.... One more from Mr Briggs Crowleyhead of Dissensus proffers this -

There are a few other "Music Is My Life" type songs in the dance zone... this is the one that springs immediately and most fondly to my mind, although the phrase occurs in the vocal lick, not the title

Kev says this is a riposte to critics who accused them of releasing samey material as singles...

This made me wonder if the Four Tops could really have critics.... what would they say? "Yo, guys - that last single was only exactly as immaculately sublime as the previous six... Cut it out"...

Still he might be right... in the same way that I and others took The Smiths "Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before" as Morrissey playfully taunting critics and foes who accused him of retierating the same old misery-me moan-stance over and over again, song after song.... It might well be doing that, on the titular level, but if you listen to the lyric they relate some oblique tale of interpersonal something or other...

Likewise that Four Tops tune, internally, is a love song that makes sense but yeah, the title maybe has this rejoinder aspect...

I could look it up on the Internet to find the truth but I can't be bothered.

And finally the return of CJ - getting greedy

That one was on my list.

That one was not.

See also "Radio Unit Shifter" or whatever it was called... and quite a few others, probably

On my list, also.Reminds me to post Dobie Gray's "Out On The Floor" - which isn't only about music, it's also about girls that are out of sight ("and I am approving"), and sharp suits and shiny shoes, and possibly pills of one kind of another... but music is the core of the floor, the pretext, the enabler. Also on my list ... And there'll be more from Ariel P, meta-musician par excellence, in a post or two. Connected in any way, shape or form to this book?Whose author also created this piece of music-not-about-music...

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Although... I reckon it's much more a song about a drug than a song about music - pretty certain the "you" that improves music is not a person but a pill... MDMA... perhaps even those delicious Mitshubishis around at the time

1 hour loop version!

As DB observes, DP's entire body of work contains a thick seam of dance-about-dance.

Well, Random Access Memories, regardless of what specific songs on it concern, is - on the macro level - framing concept, interviews, the Grand Statement / Throwdown /Polemic of how it was produced and the restraints embraced - entirely about music: bringing life back to music, remembering the future-past / past-future of music (in the genre-inventing aubiography-disco of "Giorgio By Moroder"), losing yourself to dance, etc

But this here is my favorite out of all of Daft Punk's meta-matter, and it happens to have the most on-the-nose title too!

Now, regarding other candidates that simply have the word "Music" in the title and nothing else, let me advise that -

Madonna will be denied admission

But Bukem

For Bukem, I might just build a throne...

Back to Daft Punk and music-reflexivity, here's their private pantheon tribute track, showing how the RAM-like meta tendencies were there right from the start -

I thought of a few songs-about-other-bands, one of which I like very much and the other not much at all (have a guess...)

Then there's this which is a whole other kettle of five-eyed mutant fish

James has one more general suggestion

Enda Connaughton points to a swathe of indie-rock meta

I'm sure there must be candidates here from Urge Overkill and Teenage Fanclub (this one below isn't quite it) (although in a certain meta-meta-sense, all TFC songs of that era are "about" Alex Chilton aren't they?)

Enda also proffers

and Todd Rundgren's "Death of Rock and Roll" which isn't on YouTube.

Kevin Quinn pops up again:

Marc Goodman brings a bunch - including a couple with "thematically matching videos"

Must confess that while generally a big fan of Saint Etienne I found Words and Music a bit....cloying, especially the opening track, with its settled version of acceptable pop history ("Dexy's ... New Order... anything Postcard" ), nothing too excessive or gauche or vulgarly rocking... no Goth or metal

Marc also mentions

A great choice - meta-music with edge and a point - the most interesting song about White projections towards / misrecognitions of Black Music ever - as well as being about a lot of other things beside...

And also

Another great choice, this time in the songs about the music industry subcategory - The Clash's "E.M.I.", their "Working For M.C.A." - but better than either

Prefer the studio version though- Lee P at the controls

One of the most purely powerful rock songs ever - which says something for the power of Spirit and Will, given how clumsy and untogether the Clash were as musicians (see the live version above)

Thursday, June 11, 2015

CJ, sticking with the songs about the music biz as opposed to songs about music sub-category, proposes:

I was really struck when reviewing a Lynyrd Skynyrd box set that three years before the Sex Pistols's did "E.M.I." , the Southron boys had recorded a song jibing at their own record company.

CJ also proposes "Punky Reggae Party"

Stanley Whyte suggests these four

Always thought that the Chills one wasn't.... really.... quite.... heavenly enough.... (They've done heavenly-er songs). And then there's the hubris move of putting "hit" in your song title when the chances are that it won't be - ballsy, or foolhardy, who's to say?

"Heavenly Pop Hit" did remind me though of one of my own fave meta-pop songs that also includes the word "heaven" but even more rashly and hubristic-ly includes the word "Number One":

That one does really sound heavenly, to my ears, but is stained somewhat by the humiliation of only having got to Number 14 in the U.K. charts.

The longer version (LP and 12 inch) is sublimer still - the intro section surely an influence on The Associates's "Party Fears Two"?

Talking about heaven, this gorgeous garage classic - a foundational anthem for UKG - celebrates the spiritual power of music via the archangel and his horn.

(Well, of course, the most exciting bit in "Number One Song In Heaven" - the acid-house-a-decade ahead-of-schedule breakdown - is preceded by Russell shrieking: "Gabriel plays it, God how he plays it/ Gabriel plays it, let's hear him play it")

Which connects - gospel to garage via disco and house - to the final guest suggestion:

MM nominates "It's All Right" by The Pet Shops Boys.I actually reviewed Introspective and for a moment almost saw the point of the PSB. "It's All Right" is a cover version, of course:

(Paris Brightledge, what a name!) (Sterling Void, what a fantastic name!!)

Actually that's not the final guest suggestion, because MM also nominates-

Stop press: Aaron at Airport Through The Trees with a couple of suggestions, including one I'm kicking myself about, because it is pretty much my favorite song-about-music - Sister Sledge's "Lost In Music."

We're lost in musicCaught in a trapNo turning backWe're lost in music

As per Wild Cherry above, Aaron is right to point out that with dance music - disco, funk, house etc - there's a lot of self-reflexive songs - it's music that's about itself most of the time: its own functionality, the behaviour it incites and that it is built for, the community and release it creates, etc etc. There's too many candidates and I almost thought of excluding dance, rave etc from consideration for that reason.

Mind you, especially in the early days, there were a lot of rock'n'roll songs that simply announced the existence, power, and immortality of rock'n'roll. But then that was when rock'n'roll itself was dance music.

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

(One Brother recently died - Louis Johnson - see also Aaron Grossman's tribute to the late great bassman)

Ed also suggests this

Kevin Quinn proposes "Hit Factory / Business Is Business" by Godley & Creme, while conceding it's more about the industry of music than music-as-music (as saviour, haven, elevation, surrogate friend, reason to believe, reason to keep going, remedy for all that ails, etc ). Indeed this falls into the category of anti-pop pop, the tradition of The Byrds's "So You Want To Be A Rock'n'Roll Star", Pink Floyd's "Welcome To The Machine" and "Have A Cigar", etc. As Kevin notes, it's about "the economic benefits of renovate/revive/repeat/release/reap the rewards... the clanging music of the machines churning out product, the ennui-driven mantra of the drones at the plant."

Keep
it simple

Keep
it neat

Aim
your hook

At
the man in the street

Throw
him the bones

But
freeze the meat

`Cos
the meat goes off

But
the beat goes on

Business
is business

Business
is business

Business
is business

And
only the tough survive

Radio
fallout

In
an open prison

Jazz-based
soul tinged

Watered
down rhythm

Too
many pretty sleeves

With
Nothing in `em

Johnny
be good or bad

But
not indifferent

Hard-core
bland-out

Stocking
filler

Soft-sell
overkill

Tee-shirts
given

Everybody's
wearing them

See
you at the party tonight

Force
fed

On
half dead melodies

Dragged
up from the archives

Playing
on your sympathies

I'm
being brain-washed

And
don't know how to block it

`Cos
something in the chorus

Burns
a hole in my pocket

And
I can't feel the pain

When
my finger's in the socket

And
only the numb survive

Only
the numb survive

Only
the numb survive

The Godley & Creme reminded me of two other pop-about-pop tunes by (over)producers and master confectioners, albeit in this case celebrations of pop:

Tuesday, June 02, 2015

Monday, June 01, 2015

oh my goodness - the original version of The Jezebel Spirit with the Kathryn Kuhlman voice samples that her estate forbad the use of (the reason, that My Life In the Bush of Ghosts was delayed and didn't come out before Remain In Light, as was planned). Didn't know this version was out there

Just watched Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and noticed there's a character called Eno - played by an actor called Luke Askew